The troops are on the ground, the surge has begun, and now Congress will vote on the War Supplemental. No one believes Congress will refuse to fund, with the troops on the ground and the surge begun. But in preparation for the vote, the Congressional Research Service and the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction have produced reports on the current status of the war. And things do not look good.
Dan Froomkin:
Members of Congress with any inclination to balk at President Obama's massive emergency war-funding request have found their case strengthened by two recent reports that question many of the administration's key premises and assumptions.
The reports from the Congressional Research Service and Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction raise concerns ranging from the existential to the procedural.
Just for starters, there's the lack of an exit strategy, signs of a slipping timeframe for troop drawdowns and the mixed results thus far of the troop "surge." There's also the matter of seemingly unrealistic goals for training Afghan security forces, poor planning of infrastructure projects, pervasive corruption within the Afghan government and the lack of contracting oversight. Finally there's the concern that some of the individual funding requests seem inflated, in certain areas the Pentagon isn't spending the money it already has and billions of dollars in requests don't appear to genuinely qualify as emergency spending -- the only thing Obama vowed he would ever use an emergency spending bill for again.
The CRS report is titled FY2010 Supplemental for Wars, Disaster Assistance, Haiti Relief, and Court Cases (pdf). It's not an easy read.
One potential issue in DOD’s FY2010 Request is the timeline for evaluating the effectiveness of President’s Obama’s new strategy. When President Obama approved the new deployment, he warned that the U.S. commitment was not “open-ended,” and “will allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011” after a review in December 2010.
Based on recent testimony and DOD statements, the timeframe could slip and the U.S. drawdown in July 2011 could be minor. Both Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have cautioned that the July 2010 date is “a day we start transitioning ... not a date that we're leaving,” that would be based on “conditions on the ground.” Recently, Secretary Gates said, “I think this is a several-year process.”
As to the first major battle of the surge:
The first operation using the additional U.S. troops was the re-taking of Marjah, a town of 85,000, in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan launched on February 13, 2010. While DOD considers Marjah to be free of Taliban, recent press reports suggest a mixed picture.
That's delicate phrasing. Because what the DOD considers free of Taliban is not free of Taliban. More than a month and a half ago, the New York Times reported that the Taliban were in the process of reseizing both the momentum and control, in Marja. That according to Maj. James Coffman, civil affairs leader for the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines. On May 16, the Times explained that the Taliban never left Marja, and more and more fighters were returning. A week ago, the Times reported that fighting is frequent again. And as FishOutofWater diaried, on Monday, McClatchy was quoting Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied military commander in Afghanistan, who called the ongoing situation a "bleeding ulcer":
The operation in Marjah is supposed to be the first blow in a decisive campaign to oust the Taliban from their spiritual homeland in adjacent Kandahar province, one that McChrystal had hoped would bring security and stability to Marjah and begin to convey an "irreversible sense of momentum" in the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan.
Instead, a tour last week of Marjah and the nearby Nad Ali district, during which McClatchy had rare access to meetings between McChrystal and top Western strategists, drove home the hard fact that President Barack Obama's plan to begin pulling American troops out of Afghanistan in July 2011 is colliding with the realities of the war.
There aren't enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that's needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn't dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.
"This is a bleeding ulcer right now," McChrystal told a group of Afghan officials, international commanders in southern Afghanistan and civilian strategists who are leading the effort to oust the Taliban fighters from Helmand.
What was the DOD saying, again?
(More problems, as described in the CRS report, plus testimony from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, over the jump...)
The report from the Congressional Research Service continues, with the previously reported deficiencies of Afghan security forces:
While DOD has responsibility to train the Afghan Army, DOD and the State Department jointly manage training of the Afghan police. The training of Afghan Security forces is actually carried out by U.S. military personnel, NATO coalition teams, and private contractors DOD and the State Department have experienced a myriad of problems in carrying out this training. For the Afghan Army, problems include attrition rates of about 20%, deficiencies in leadership, frequent absenteeism that can reduce units to 50% of their strength, limited logistical capabilities, and questionable behavior. For the police, training has been hampered by illiteracy, corruption, and the targeting and killing of police recruits and police by insurgents.
And more questions about that 2011 withdrawal date:
The Administration’s supplemental war request for an additional $521 million for military construction would bring the FY2010 total to $1.9 billion—double the FY2009 level—and raises questions about whether DOD is building facilities to support the temporary stationing of warfighting troops or creating permanent bases in Afghanistan (see Table 5). In recent statutory language, Congress permitted spending for a “long-term presence” but prohibited spending for “permanent stationing” of U.S. troops in Afghanistan (see “War-Related Military Construction Provisions”). In light of current spending rates for military construction in Afghanistan, it is also not clear how urgently the current funds are needed.
Crunching the numbers:
Taking O&M (Operation & Maintenance) funding for military construction into account increases the amount spent for military construction appreciably. For example, in FY2009, DOD added $409 million from O&M accounts for construction in Afghanistan to the $900 million appropriated, raising the total to $1.4 billion. This amount nearly equaled the total spent on construction between FY2003 and FY2008 and in a single year, doubled DOD’s construction investment in Afghanistan (see Table 5).
If DOD dedicated the full $500 million in O&M available to military construction in Afghanistan, the total in FY2010 would reach $2.4 billion, which would again almost double the entire prior seven-year investment. DOD has also submitted new legislative proposal to use 0&M monies for unspecified minor construction in support of contingency operations until October 1, 2012. If that proposal is approved by Congress, total funding for military construction in Afghanistan could rise further (see “War-Related Military Construction Provisions”).
Somehow, that doesn't sound like the budget for an anticipated withdrawal.
Another possible sign of DOD’s commitment in Afghanistan is the amount invested in certain key bases of the more than 25 identifiable sites. This includes:
• $1.3 billion invested in Bagram Air Base, $248 million requested for a total of
$1.6 billion if the request is approved;
• $767 million appropriated for Kandahar Air Base, $181 million requested for a
total of $948 million if the request is approved;
• $595 million for Forward Operating Base Tombstone/Bastion (U.S. and U.K funding), $299 million requested for a total of $894 million if the request is approved.
Somehow, that doesn't sound like the budget for an anticipated withdrawal, either.
On May 20, Arnold Fields, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, testified before the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights & Oversight of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (pdf) (emphasis his):
Since April of last year, SIGAR has completed 23 reports. We have 7 more in the drafting stage and another 10 audits that are ongoing. The completed audits include reviews of construction contracts, evaluations of how implementing agencies are managing and monitoring their programs, and assessments of whether U.S.-funded programs are achieving their objectives. SIGAR has also issued several audit reports to assess what the United States and other international donors are doing to strengthen the capacity Afghan institutions to account for funds and prevent corruption within Afghan institutions.
Our work to date has identified several issues that hamper the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. Reviews of infrastructure contracts have found serious construction problems resulting, in part, from a lack of quality assurance on the part of both implementing agencies and contractors. Agencies continue to suffer from a shortage of qualified contracting officials to provide sufficient oversight for the billions of dollars spent in Afghanistan. In addition, U.S. agencies lack a full picture of all completed, underway, and planned projects in Afghanistan. The integration of such information with U.S. agencies and with other donors and Afghan entities is essential for decision-makers and stakeholders to better plan, coordinate, monitor, and report on the overall effort. Despite numerous reports highlighting this problem in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last eight years, one of our first audits found that the United States still does not have a system that would allow agencies to share information about reconstruction programs. Furthermore, we have identified weaknesses in the data bases that individual agencies are maintaining of reconstruction contracts. We expect to issue an audit next month that details
these weaknesses and makes recommendations to improve them.
I am particularly concerned about three issues that our auditors have identified over the last year: inadequate planning, questions about sustainability, and accountability.
On inadequate planning:
The United States has invested more than $25 billion—nearly half of all reconstruction dollars appropriated to date—to train and equip the Afghan security forces. Despite this investment, U.S military officials were unable to provide us with an updated master plan for developing the facilities needed to house and train these forces.
Since 2002, the United States has obligated over $732 million to increase Afghanistan’s ability to generate and transmit electricity. And yet, SIGAR’s audit of the energy sector found that Afghanistan lacks a current Energy Sector Master Plan that establishes priorities, timeframes, and costs associated with energy sector goals.
In the absence of proper planning, the United States risks wasting reconstruction funds on projects that either 1) do not complement each other, 2) do not meet the evolving needs of Afghans, or 3) are unsustainable.
I have made seven trips to Afghanistan since being appointed to this job. On every trip, Afghan officials have complained to me about the failure of the United States and the international donor community to consult fully with them about their priorities. This trip was no exception.
According to the IMF, the Afghan economy is growing by an average of about seven percent per year, but this is nowhere near enough to generate the revenues needed to maintain government operations, let alone sustained development.
This reality impacts every reconstruction project.
Accountability:
Donors, international organizations, the Afghan government and—most important—the Afghan people are disturbed by the pervasive corruption in Afghanistan. In a nation-wide survey completed in two months ago by the International Security Assistance Force—ISAF—83 percent of Afghans said that government corruption affected their daily lives.1 A recent poll by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime concluded that Afghans paid about $2.5 billion in bribes to government officials and members of the police force in 2009. That amounts to about 25 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and is almost as much as is generated by the illicit drug trade. Corruption robs the poor, leads to misallocation of resources, destroys trust in government, and threatens to undermine the entire reconstruction effort.
Measuring success:
During my recent visit to Afghanistan, I saw significant improvement in civilian-military coordination in the south. What I did not witness and we will be looking for are what those of us with a military background call “effects.” Has better coordination helped us achieve reconstruction goals, such as job creation, which is a major objective of the new strategy?
In other words, the military is not succeeding, and the reconstruction efforts are struggling. The CRS report adds this:
The key test is the campaign for Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold and city of 1 million in southern Afghanistan, expected to get fully underway by June 2010.
But there is no reason to believe it will be any different than Marja. Which did not succeed, militarily, but did produce a lot of suffering and death. No wonder the civilians of Kandahar are worried.